


New Kid

by sylph_feather



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: A little, Body Horror, Creepy, Gen, Ghosts, Horror, OC, Supernatural - Freeform, but only for the perspective!, external perspective, ghostly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:09:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23840593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylph_feather/pseuds/sylph_feather
Summary: That Fenton kid… he’s not right.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 250





	New Kid

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GothMoth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GothMoth/gifts).



John fit in… relatively well, Dash noted. He was a small-to-medium sized town kid, which helped in his adjustment to Amity, and he slid right into the football team’s ranks easily, being fairly skilled and bulky. 

There were two things that stuck out about him. 

The first was, Dash supposed, to be expected. The kid’s parents hadn’t exactly planned on ghosts; yes, they had heard Amity was the most haunted town, but they had taken that to be a tourist trap, maybe a few odd occurrences of wind and whatnot. Not, you know, ghost laser beams that had torn up their lawn. 

It didn’t help that they were on the same block as the Fentons— notorious for destruction from numerous ghosts and the Fentons themselves. John had said their nice house came  _ unbelievably  _ cheap, and Dash didn’t have a hard time picturing why that was, what with the constant destruction and noise, not to mention Jack Fenton’s driving and the giant Ops Center that stuck out like a sore thumb in the skyline. 

The  _ unexpected  _ thing was that John was scared of  _ Fenton.  _

“One of my neighbors is creepy lookin, man,” John had stated, brushing a meaty hand through his dark brown hair. 

“If it was creepy it was probably a ghost,” Kwan mused, tossing a nerd’s binder out of his reach as the orange haired loser jumped up in vain. 

“I dunno, didn’t you guys say the ghosts all looked…  _ ghosty?”  _ John asked, unsure. 

“I thought you said it  _ was _ ghosty,” Dash grunted, picking up the kid and shoving him in a locker for good measure. 

John pounded it shut. “I said  _ creepy.  _ He still walked, and looked  _ kinda  _ like a person, just like… somethin’ wasn’t right.” 

“Eh, there’s ghosts that do that, too,” Dash quickly ended the conversation, thinking of that no-faced ghost the Fentons warned could look like anyone save for their eyes. 

At least, Dash  _ thought  _ that was the end of that, until John gasped and pointed, looking wigged out as though some centipede had crawled up his arm, and murmured, “that’s him.” 

Dash squinted into the crowd, sizing up the many potential targets, all of which looked perfectly normally pathetic. Dash’s tone was not at all sympathetic as he bluntly asked “who?” 

“Black hair, blue eyes,” muttered John, hands growing a little sweaty as he rubbed them together. 

Dash and Kwan came to the same conclusion simultaneously, if their sudden outburst into wheezing, choking laughter was anything to go by. 

“You,” Kwan breathed in, coughing out more laughter, “you think  _ he’s—“  _ the statement dissolved into hilarity again. 

“Fenturd,” Dash hacked, almost crying as fragments of thoughts escaped, “ _ creepy.”  _

John had the spine to look offended. “The way he moves isn’t  _ right,”  _ he barked, daring a glance towards Danny only to flinch back a bit. Something in his brain told him  _ predator, dangerous,  _ as though he was staring into the jaws of some incomprehensible beast. 

Jaws that his new friends were laughing in the face of, mocking its teeth as they breathed its deadly breath. 

xXx

John had math class with Fenton. 

Now, normally he wouldn’t be paying attention anyways (the only parabolas he was going to have any relation to were the arc of a ball!) he definitely couldn’t have even if he wanted to. 

He sat in the back, staring at Fenton’s black head, feeling very watched. It was as though the drool of that jaw was dripping above his head, and all he could do was sit silently still as his hands quaked.

Everything about Fenton was a modicum off. This morning, his eyes had looked dead, unfocussed, and his skin overly pale and almost gaunt. 

Now, he was peeling his lips back in a smile at the girl next to him’s presumable joke, and it could only make John think of a snake showing its venom. Even the way his shoulders jerked up and down in hushed laughter was more like strings were jolting at a body that was too loose. 

The goth friend gave a little frown from Danny’s side, purple eyes (did she wear colored contacts just,  _ normally?!)  _ narrowing as they caught sight of John’s staring. A black painted fingernail gave Danny a subtle point in John’s direction. 

John averted his gaze, focussing nervously on the blank paper ahead of him as Danny owlishly turned in his direction, motion slow and steady. 

John could feel the metaphorical thing’s tongue as it sank its jaws around his space like a prison, breath growing short in this warm and uncomfortable space.

He dared to dart his eyes up, anxiety and danger palpable, too much to remain unknown. 

John’s brown,  _ human  _ gaze met with the pits of death. Like everything about him, a passover glance revealed nothing  _ overly  _ ordinary, but John had done a double take this morning because  _ oh it’s the Fenton’s kid I should beat him up for what his parent’s stupid net did to our mailbox,  _ and that had resulted in finding out just  _ too much.  _

A moment of gazing longer and that illusion was wrecked, and you noticed the pale skin, the sharp teeth, the bony figure, the stilted motions. It all looked as though someone were inexpertly puppeteering a corpse, tugging at strings to make the dead thing dance. 

Similarly, Danny’s eyes were normal, and if he were to blink away, they would remain so in John’s mind. Startlingly blue, yes, but  _ normal.  _ But John was too nervous; he had chosen to meet the jaws of death, and he was going to stare it down. Under scrutiny, Fenton’s eyes swirled like an abyssal ocean was trapped underneath, reflecting twinges of green lightning. 

Overcome with the irrational fear of being sucked into that abyss, John’s resolve was gone, and his eyes flicked down again.

_ Smited down in math class,  _ he contemplated as Fenton shrugged bonily and turned around to his friend once again,  _ what a thought.  _

xXx

It’s a week. 

A week of nights full of John glancing at that one window of the Fenton house and feeling his skin crawl— sometimes, he swears there’s a faint yet threatening glow of whitish blue, and sometimes green. A week of seeing Fenton in the hallways and feeling the huffing breath of death as his body disjointedly made its way along with its menacing aura and hollow eyes and tight skin. 

A week that had several times where Dash and Kwan shoved Fenton against the lockers, and John stood by feeling like they were sticking their hands down the beast’s throat, idiotically welcoming it to snap its jaws and throw them back— and everytime he felt stupid as they laughed at his fear, as the death beast that resided within and around Fenton allowed them to withdraw their hands. 

A week… and it was over. 

Mostly. 

Fenton looked normal, and not just on first glance; that threatening aura was gone, the beast’s jaws no longer raising from the floor to gulp John down into clammy anxiety every time the boy was around. 

Still, if he stared too long he’d catch a glint. With every glance, every passing day, those glints of green in his eyes and the vortex of death faded, but it was enough to jolt John out of complacency. 

xXx

Another week of fading glimpses had lulled John into breathing easy. 

“Can you believe you thought he was  _ creepy?”  _ Dash laughed as John held a prone, glaring Fenton against the locker. 

“I’ll give you weird,” Kwan conceded, laughing along. 

John laughed, and took Fenton’s shoulders—  _ connected to a living, breathing, body that didn’t look like a corpse,  _ he reminded himself, taking it in, relishing the confirmation that Fenton wasn’t scary at all— and shoved him against the lockers more. 

And Danny— 

Glared.

His eyes flared that toxic, radioactive green, and John felt lightning strike, igniting that fear. 

Fenton’s eyes went back to blue, and John ignored the glimmers of green as Dash opened a locker for him to shove the loser in. 

**Author's Note:**

> “Danny Fenton seeming creepy, unnatural, predatory, etcetera to the general population of Amity Park. Or only seeming creepy, unnatural, predatory, etcetera to tourists, while Amity Park locals are confused by anyone finding Fenton ‘creepy/intimidating’”


End file.
